Into Eternity - Into Eternity



1. Torn (5:33) 2. Sorrow (3:50) 3. Left Behind (3:16) 4. The Modern Day (4:54) 5. A Frozen Escape (3:51) 6. Behind the Disguise (4:16) 7. Holding onto Emptiness (4:53) 8. Into Eternity (4:07) 9. Speak of the Dead (3:58) 10. Silence through Virtue (4:50)

Total Running Time: 43:15



Rotting corpses, mass murderers, ravenous vermin, pagan sacrifices, and Satan himself. At one point in time, a bunch of young dudes that went under the moniker of Possessed thought it would be cool to write music appropriate for such imagery and thus came up with what today is known as death metal. And for a few years, the genre kept plodding forward with a number of acts that sought nothing but to draw the limits of sickness and vocal unintelligibility even further, until someone came up with the fortunate idea of exploring all the progressive (and other) possibilities that death metal had to offer, thus allowing for some truly excellent music to surface where there had been previously nothing but a jaded formula that only managed to scare ultra-conservative, paranoid, and Valium-overdosed mothers.

The revolution was in, and since then the metal connoisseur has been introduced to the technical prowess of bands like Cynic and Death, the moodiness of Opeth, or the melodic appeal of acts such as Dark Tranquility and In Flames. Additionally, the last few years have seen the emergence of musicians that choose to combine clean vocals with their death metal counterparts, making for a very effective and interesting combination when avoiding the dangerous clichés that accompany it. Add Into Eternity to your list of quality acts playing a progressively melodic kind of death metal with varying vocal styles and a timely sense of heaviness set up against a catchy understanding of melody, because with its well-executed debut album, this Canadian quintet has proved that it longs to accompany the aforementioned bands, among others, in the pantheon of quality death metal.

What is doubtlessly misleading about my description, however, is the fact that one would be prone to think that the vast majority of vocals contained herein are of the cookie monster type, something that is actually quite far from the truth. Tim Roth's clean vocals are largely dominating throughout, and even though accompanied or complemented by guttural growls on several times, it is their bright upper mid-range quality that blesses much of Into Eternity's material with a pleasant timbre. Actually, the band's material is blessed by the fact that its members all contribute with their respective parts only as much as is needed, thus heeding the old proverb of "less is sometimes more" and creating a number of focused, coherent, and digestible songs.

Perhaps the only thing that one could ask of Into Eternity for the future is a bit more punch and avoidance of death metal standards, as some of the album's moments do come across as less inspired or fall into typical death metal dissonance and flanger annoyance. Otherwise, this band has managed to use the elements of its peers in an original and quite clever manner, utilizing an awesome riff that recalls Amorphis circa Tales from the Thousand Lakes during "Torn," harboring on elements of melody slightly reminiscent of In Flames or slow moodiness a la Opeth, and just scoring an excellent and unforgettable song with "Speak of the Dead." All in all, one of the best debuts to come from a death metal act in recent years, and one that shows that Into Eternity will very likely become a huge force of its own as the band matures and develops.

-by Marcelo Silveyra

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